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Traditionally passenger rail service was designed to move commuters from the suburbs to the cities and vice versa. Over the past few decades, suburb to suburb commuting has grown significantly. Cities like Los Angeles, Portland, and Philadelphia already have suburb to suburb passenger rail service. Even Washington DC has a proposed light rail line that is designed for suburb to suburb commuting. With the success of all these suburb to suburb rail lines in large metropolitan areas, do you think we will see a lot more suburb to suburb rail lines being built across the country in the future?
Here is a list of some suburb to suburb passenger rail lines.
By what measure are you judging the success of the suburb to suburb lines?
There is a light rail line planned between Brampton and Mississauga, which would mostly serve to connect these suburbs rather than act as a feeder route into the big city's transit system.
By what measure are you judging the success of the suburb to suburb lines?
There is a light rail line planned between Brampton and Mississauga, which would mostly serve to connect these suburbs rather than act as a feeder route into the big city's transit system.
Mainly by ridership but my main focus is will we see more of these type of rail lines in the future.
It's been proposed in the Chicago area for both the subway('L, the Mid-City Transitway), and for our commuter rail system(Metra, the STAR Line). Neither of them have been constructed, and funding issues and freight railroad objections(in the case of the latter) have held up both ideas from officially getting off the ground, though. Would be nice if either plan would be built one day, though.
Los Angeles County Metro Rail is pretty much a hub and spoke system for now--with Downtown LA at the center.
But the LA region is polycentric, and the vast majority of LA-area "suburbs" are pretty dense, so it is starting to move away from spoke-hub.
Yep, the Crenshaw Line is another one of those "suburb to suburb" lines that has construction beginning very soon. Runs from the Expo / Crenshaw stop on the Expo Line to the LAX / Aviation Station on the Green Line - eventually it will connect to the Wilshire / La Brea stop on the Purple Line and even further into the future, the Hollywood / Highland stop on the Red Line. I would imagine that ~30k+ weekday riders (same as the Green Line) is what is likely as far as ridership on the initial segment.
Another proposed "suburb to suburb" line is the East San Fernando Valley corridor line which would run from Selma in northern San Fernando Valley down to Sherman Oaks, over the Sepulveda Pass connecting to the Purple Line and on to the Expo Line. Some fantasy maps have this line continuing all the way to Marina Del Rey / LAX. I think this line could easily attract 100k+ weekday riders. This is a priority project and what I think will become one of Garcetti's "pet projects", so hopefully that can get started in the near future.
There are also proposals for a Gold Line extension from Pasadena to Glendale and Burbank, but this is a far-off proposal.
Additionally, Southern California has (what I believe) is the original suburb-to-suburb commuter rail, connecting the Inland Empire to Orange County.
Of course Southern California is pretty unique in that most of these suburb to suburb lines still hit some fairly major job centers (West LA, LAX / El Segundo, Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys).
I think the problem is in many metros there are not many (or no) significant enough concentrations of jobs to warrant a transit line. Obviously there are places like Tyson's Corner, which have a lot of jobs in a suburban environment, but they don't exist everywhere.
A related issue is even if there's a large office park complex with a lot of jobs, the area it's located is sprawly and unwalkable enough that even getting from a rail station to your job may be unpleasant. Obviously shuttle buses making loops could be integrated, but waiting around for a local transfer generally makes people less likely to use mass transit.
Yep, the Crenshaw Line is another one of those "suburb to suburb" lines that has construction beginning very soon. Runs from the Expo / Crenshaw stop on the Expo Line to the LAX / Aviation Station on the Green Line - eventually it will connect to the Wilshire / La Brea stop on the Purple Line and even further into the future, the Hollywood / Highland stop on the Red Line. I would imagine that ~30k+ weekday riders (same as the Green Line) is what is likely as far as ridership on the initial segment.
Another proposed "suburb to suburb" line is the East San Fernando Valley corridor line which would run from Selma in northern San Fernando Valley down to Sherman Oaks, over the Sepulveda Pass connecting to the Purple Line and on to the Expo Line. Some fantasy maps have this line continuing all the way to Marina Del Rey / LAX. I think this line could easily attract 100k+ weekday riders. This is a priority project and what I think will become one of Garcetti's "pet projects", so hopefully that can get started in the near future.
There are also proposals for a Gold Line extension from Pasadena to Glendale and Burbank, but this is a far-off proposal.
Additionally, Southern California has (what I believe) is the original suburb-to-suburb commuter rail, connecting the Inland Empire to Orange County.
Of course Southern California is pretty unique in that most of these suburb to suburb lines still hit some fairly major job centers (West LA, LAX / El Segundo, Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys).
I forget to mention that in my original post as that is a true suburb-to-suburb commuter rail line.
Additionally, Southern California has (what I believe) is the original suburb-to-suburb commuter rail, connecting the Inland Empire to Orange County.
Of course Southern California is pretty unique in that most of these suburb to suburb lines still hit some fairly major job centers (West LA, LAX / El Segundo, Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys).
The suburb to suburb commuter line has very low ridership:
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